You love your logo. It’s the essence of your brand wrapped up neatly into one beautiful and unique design. In fact, your logo is one of the most important design assets that your organization has. It’s what people visually associate with your brand. When they’re driving down the road and see the icon or typography from your logo, they’re reminded of you. When they see your logo on the business card you handed them at that dinner party three months ago, they think of you. But what if your logo is unprotected?
I know it may sound silly, but you NEED to protect your logo. From what? From misrepresentation. From mis-use. Protect your logo so that others who use it aren’t putting your iconic brand in jeopardy.
It happens far too often. Business owners use a local sign company to get a new sign made for the front of their store and the sign company stretches the logo to fill the length of the sign, throwing regard for aspect ratio out the window.
Or a t shirt company is hired to make some shirts for your non-profit’s live event, and they end up using a green that is less “grass green” and more “holy-cow-neon-green.”
You don’t want your organization to confuse people by having others dilute your visual brand. So how do you protect it?
Having a style guide designed.
A style guide is a booklet, normally a digital pdf, that describes the proper do’s and don’ts in regards to working with your logo. Typically it gives instructions like “do not stretch logo” or “do not rotate logo” or “do not place logo over a background with poor contrast.” It also typically protects your color palette by listing in detail the CMYK or RGB color codes that your logo requires.
So when does a style guide come in handy?
- When you’re having a printer print shirts, signs, business cards or anything else for your brand
- When you’re having a designer design any marketing materials for your brand
- When you have interns or other employees working with you logo and brand
- When you, yourself, want to make sure that you aren’t diluting your visual brand identity when posting on social media, etc.
Don’t make the mistake of not protecting your logo and your brand. Having a style guide designed is easy and affordable and will end up saving you headache down the road.
Need help designing your style guide?
